Reggie James asks in his most recent essay: “How does a technologist begin to look at their body of work?”
The question itself is poignant, but the proposed answer) is of particular note.
Towards a body of work.
What is it supposed to speak to? It should be, I hope, beyond the scope of scaling one app. It should be, I hope, in constant dialogue of bridging past, present, and future. I think, at least what I’ve been meditating on for the past 7 months, is that we have to look towards designing an organization that allows the ability to build out that body of work. Still venture back-able. Not just a design studio reliant on client work or a large art practice.
Building community-owned funding networks (i.e. tokenized communities) could potentially enable this vision. Imagine a creator who is a part of many networks, getting (retro)actively funded for the value they provide to the common mission or meme that the network is aligned around. Value then stems from 1) the community’s ability to fund great creators and builders to do great work and 2) the ability of those creators and builders to deliver.
Tokenized communities, as an alternative to VC and bootstrapping traditional businesses, allow communities to capture some of the value their members create through governnace so that they can continue to fund those creators.
The networks don’t need opinions, they need themes. Then they fund a diverse set of opinions.